Welcome back to Cooperative Comic Book month! We’ve seen the DC Comic Book Universe! We’ve seen the Marvel DC Universe! We’ve seen some crazy space Comic Book universe! And this week, we venture into the Image Comic Book Universe!

I pre-ordered Invincible: The Hero-Building Game Season 2 a while ago from GameNerdz, and it just arrived late September 2026. That’s right! I had forgotten I ordered this! What perfect timing! It came during Cooperative Comic Book month!

This is an expansion for the Invincible: The Hero-Building Game. NOTE! This is not a standalone product! You need the original game to play!

You might remember that we discussed the original Invincible: The Hero-Building Game a while ago (see review here), and we basically loved it! This solo and cooperative bag-building push-your-luck game went over so well that it made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024!

Will we like the expansion? Let’s check it out!

Unboxing and Discussion

This is a relatively thin box compared to the original.

Luckily, it’s the same width and height as the original game so you can store them on top of each other.

This is an expansion! It comes with four new characters from the Invincible Cinematic Universe: Black Samson, Monster Girl, Dupli-Kate and Shrinking Rae. See above! Each of these characters plays quite different than the original characters from the base box.

Mostly, there’s just a bunch of new cards that give more Super Powers, more Ultimate Powers, more Events, more Challenges, more Helpers, more Episodes, more Villains and more starting Powers! More cards!!! It’s just more stuff to expand your base game!

Of course, there’s a bunch of new punchouts (the new heroes especially), but most of the new punchouts are tokens for specific Episodes in the game!

There’s two “new” big things in the game. The first is “falter” cubes. These “green” (?) cubes get added to your bag (usually as bad news), and if you draw them, they cause the biggest bad guy (in your area) to get a free shot! The worst part of these “falter” cubes is the color … I can distinguish them from the blue cubes, but I can see a lot of people not being able to.

The other new thing is “fuel” tokens, which you can use in place of cubes. They don’t go into your bag like cubes, but you can use these like cubes to power your powers!

The new stuff is all covered in the (smallish) Rulebook. There are also 6 new episodes in the Episode Guide: It’s basically a new campaign!

Overall. this is just more “stuff” for the Invincible: The Hero-Building Game! It looks like the original game, so the art and graphic design is consistent between them.

I Forgot!

I forgot how to play Invincible: The Hero-Building Game! I remembered “most” of the basics, but realized I couldn’t just jump in without reminding myself how to play the game! To give the expansion a fair shake, I wanted to make sure I was up on the original game! In fact, I had to play the first two Episodes in the original game (so you see ALL the mechanisms on the game) to remind myself of everything!

I forgot how much I love this game! I tend to eschew “weird” solo modes, so I just played Invincible and Atom Eve two-handed solo (with no weird solo exceptions) … just like I did back in the original review! I typically do this because solo games can get messy with extra rules, but if you just played as if it were a 2-player game, then you only have to worry about normal rules!

Oh ya, this is a great game. Even if this expansion completely sucks, it made me play the base game again and remember how much I love it!

New Heroes!

The best part of this new expansion is the new Heroes. Over a bunch of solo and cooperative games, I got to know and (mostly) love these new characters!

Dupli-Kate is probably my favorite! She’s so interesting and different as she can split into three, and you can choose which Kate will perform an action! She is great for keeping the minions under control as she spreads across the world!! She is a little fragile, as each Kate only has 4 points, but she resets if a Kate is killed (and that Kate can come back)! She was SO interesting!

Monster Girl was a close second favorite! Remember those new “falter” cubes? The “falter” cubes still gives a bad guy a free shot, but Monster Girl can use them and treat them as a wild cube! So, you kind of “want” Monster Girl to get “falter” cubes, as she can really use them! And it’s kind of okay if she gets KO’d (she takes a LOT of damage), because she’s so powerful! I think every game that I used her, she got KO’d at least once … and that’s okay!

Shrinking Rae was also great and a close third. She reminds me VERY much of Ant-Man from Marvel Champions (see review here): when she changes to big mode, she spackos a bad guy! And her powers are a little different if she is in big or small mode (and she even had minis for both modes). It makes sense to switch modes a lot if you are Rae!

Black Samson was probably my least favorite; he uses fuel a lot more than other heroes. He tends to embrace the use of fuel! I had trouble getting going with him. He wasn’t bad, and he was interesting with his power suit but I tended to prefer all the other characters more.

Solo

Over the course of at least 6 solo games, I got a good sense of the new heroes and the new powers! I, of course, played solo as two-handed solo (there is NO notion of true solo in this game: everything is balanced for 2, 3, and 4-Player games). I was pleased that I won Episode 1! It was a challenge though!

I lost Episode 2 when using Shrinking Rae and Black Samson! Basically, I couldn’t save enough people! (You have to have at least 2 people per zone “saved” as well as taking out the bad guy!) The Powers I got just didn’t have enough “saves” in them.

In a second game of Episode 2 with Monster Girl and DupliKate, I WAS able to save enough people and win! It seems like Monster Girl and Kate are a “little bit better” at saving the bystanders. Some of this was a function of the powers that Samson and Rae drew (not enough “saves”), but I think some of this was not paying enough attention to saving, and also Samson has NO SAVES on his front side! It was interesting to see that your approach does have to change depending on what you need to do!

Just a lot of fun to play with the new characters: they are all different and interesting, and the solo mode works great.

Cooperative

So, how do the new characters work together? Honestly, the game still flows the same for the most part; there’s no real change in flow.

Players still play “at their own pace”, drawing from the bag and playing cubes simultaneously. The more I think about it, the more this reminds me of how the game flowed with Slay The Spire (the board game: see review here): players kind of “do their own thing” simultaneously, keeping the game flowing, but every so often slowing down and synchronizing with their teammates.

“I need some help with this bad guy! Can you help if you have a chance?”
“I need to save a few people then I’ll be right over!”

Honestly, this “play when you want” works so well in this game! You cam imagine super heroes having the agency to do good stuff on their turn, but still working together as needed! This is the perfect blend of player agency and cooperation!

To be clear, all the new rules (which there aren’t THAT many) don’t really change the flow of the cooperative game. This is the best kind of expansion: give me some more variety, but keep all the great stuff from the original game! This expansion keeps the original flow from the original game … which is so awesome!

Mixing This Up

So, you CAN play the game using ONLY the new Heroes, only the new Super Powers, only the new Ultimates, and only the new Enemies! In other words, if you DO NOT wish to mix all the new stuff back into the box, you can just play the new stuff. You still need a lot of tokens and save dice and all that from the base game, but you can play with “only” the new stuff.

If you look at my set-up above, you can see that I kept all the expansion stuff on the left (far) side of the table and all the base stuff on the right (near) side of the table. I wanted to make sure I kept everything separate so I can put everything back in their respective boxes.

At first I wasn’t worried, because I noticed the Super Power cards are notated with a 2 in lower right corner (see above).

But nothing else is! The Ultimate powers DO NOT have a 2!!

The Villains don’t! have a 2!! The Challenges and Helpers don’t!!! The Events don’t!!!!What the heck!!!??? Why would they mark the Super Power cards AND NOTHING ELSE???? THIS MAKES NO SENSE TO ME!

So, for all my games with the Expansion, I ONLY used the cards from the expansion, because I was afraid I’d never be able to separate the sets!

To help people, like me, who want to know what cards are in here, I have a section at the end of this review where I have pictures all of the cards that aren’t labelled so you can always separate them … if you want. Maybe this is just a me thing, but I am VERY annoyed that only one set of cards are annotated with the 2!!!!

Conclusion

The best expansions remind you how much you love the base game! If this expansion completely sucked, I’d still be happy that it reminded me to play the base game again and rediscover how much I loved Invincible: The Hero-Building Game! In the end, though, this expansion was great: it added 4 new heroes, a new campaign (with 6 episodes), and just a “few” new mechanisms … plus a whole bunch of new cards! It adds a lot to the game without making it much more complicated! I feel like (and did) I could show off the new expansion to a bunch of new gamers without missing a beat!

I am annoyed that the cards are not all marked with a “2” to show they are from Season 2. It’s weird they only marked the Super Powers and nothing else? If you are like me and want to be able to separate things, see the Appendix (below) for pictures of all the cards!

I am less annoyed that the “falter” cubes are SO CLOSE in color to the blue cubes, but I am still annoyed. I was able to distinguish them without problem, but I do worry that others will have issues.

Other than the lack of markings and weird coloring on “falter” cubes, I loved this expansion! I heartily recommend it with an 8.5/10 or 9/10. It’s easy to jump into, doesn’t make the base game much more complicated, but still gives you a lot more content! This is the best kind of expansion: it preserves the flow of the original game, but just gives you more stuff.

Appendix: The Season 2 Cards that ARE NOT MARKED

These are pictures of all Season 2 cards that are UNMARKED. All Super Power cards are marked with a 2 in the lower right corner.

The base powers and starting powers (granted, these probably don’t HAVE to be marked, because it’s clear which hero they belong to).

Season 2 Challenge cards (6 total).

Season 2 Helper cards (6 total).

Season 2 Level 3 Villains (8 total).

Season 2 Level 2 Villains (8 total).

Season 2 Level 1 Villains (3 total).

All Season 2 Villain Cards (20 total … includes Angstrom Levy).

All Season 2 Ultimate Power cards (17 total).

Season 2 Event Cards (9 total).